1 year later and I agree! I just bought the whole pack for 40 bucks and have sunk 10 hours already! I'm so excited to be back. 12 years away and I never even beat prophecies back then. The story is so good and the lore so amazing.
@@randalthor6872 i'm going to email ArenaNet to get my account back, i completely forgot the email i used for it so many years ago xD i'm looking forward to start playing it again
Honestly I think an entirely new game would be best. Keep the immersive fantasy world, keep the double profession and the low damage/health numbers so both PVP & PVE can work well, but increase the pace and reduce area sizes so it feels more modern Everyone now is running multiple speedboosts (through skills and consumables) because the walks are too long compared to modern experiences
I remember being a 13 year old kid sitting in the walmart aisle reading the game box for Guild Wars over and over again before finaly buying it with some birthday money later that year. My game of choice at the time was FF11. Gw changed my life, coming from the grindfest of ff11 (as much as I loved that game) I was in awe at being "max level" so quick. Like you, I love GW1. Bit, unlike you I adore GW2. GW2 feels like the game that GW1 wanted to be but couldn't. Maybe that's why, i don't see GW2 as a sequel. I see GW2 as GW: Online. GW was an amazing single player rpg, with multiplayer hubs a la Monster Hunter, but a shitty mmo.
GW2 while good, is a bait and switch for big gw1 fans. It LOOKS like guild wars, but the gameplay is so different, the questing so different, the focus so different. The damn cancer cash shop etc. Its a good game in its own, but when i play guild wars 1, it kinda makes me irritated about 2.
Guild Wars 2 just didn't resonate with me. It's ashame because I love the lore. I just didn't think it was fun to play. I really wish GW1 hadn't been cancelled in order to make way for GW2.
I feelyou man, think8ng about jump8ng backinto it and letting my girl have a taste of it.. best mmo ive ever played, it just sucks i lost my account :(
Not dead to me, started new characters a month or two ago and bought my son of 9 years old an account, training up the new generation with a low learning curve game, teaming up to go through missions and having fun. Making it even more fun and immersive through little things like yelling "Run, just run, I'll hold them off a little!!" while running from the destroyers during the first Eye of the North quest to get there. :)
Honestly, I do have hope that Anet will re create a similar game like OGW. With a cap lvl at 20 again and just use the same foundations from GW. Maybe not Anet but another company who takes interest and inspiration from GW1
@@armandozertuche4054 A Guild Wars Story: In-between Legends could be like a revamped GW1 with the same combat as GW1, but with the beginning of combat skills from GW2 twist. Why not have a warrior, monk, AND guardian in the same game? Why not introduce the greatsword and torch and horn weapons with new skills? Why not show with lore, what happened with the evolution of each class? A somber story can be held with a Guild Wars 1.5 (kinda) game as we go through the story and see the landscape before our eyes change and drown as the inevitable ending of the story reaches its pinnacle (The rise of the dragons). We could finally explore the left-out god-realms that wait in vacancy and then we watch or find out just why they abandon the heroes they made. We can watch what happens to the ministry of purity and the changes that closes cantha's borders. There is 200+ years of lore we can catch up on... but will ANET take the opportunity to establish a better connection between the games and their styles, respectively? ... probably not... but some of us can hope that one day they do.
GW2 introduced me to the franchise. Then I strated playing GW1 in 2014 and it became one of my favorite games ever - and it remained until today. It is more than nostalgia, something is there that you don't find anywhere else. Today I play both games and appreciate them for what they are.
@@vukkulvar9769 I think I started because of the Hall of Monuments rewards. As it often is, you forget pretty fast about the older graphics, limited control and so and you start immersing yourself in the world and start enjoying the game and it's mechanics as they are. I tend to go back to older games and be able to enjoy them. I found that pretty graphics isn't the most important element to me in a game (I'd rather prefer it running smooth for one). Another thing that also helped getting into GW1 is, that it shares a lot of it soundtracks with GW2 (or the other way around rather) which helped me feeling "at home" immediatly.
@@miljororforsprakpartiet290 I really like classic wow too. When I was younger and tried GW1 out when it first released, it had no chance against WoW. WoW back then was just the better game in so many aspects. I only later (2014) started to like it for what it was. It definitly isnt a WoW clone, though. They are totally different games.
@@TheDarkmining Heh, yeah, I didn't actually get into WoW tbh. The UI though, which is something a noob gets the first impression of, feels straight away copied from WoW, as well as the blurry graphics.
I was never really that excited by new features or systems (in this timeline, or the Utopian timeline). At this point I would be beyond excited about literally any new piece of content in gw1. And I think others agree, evidenced by the massive spike from this small update. Gw1 players have managed to play the same content for over a decade and still enjoy it. Something as simple as a single mission or new quest in an existing zone would feel like an expansion at this point.
That is so true. Look at this small update - you would think it was an expansion with how many people are back. If anything, I hope Anet sees this too. It means they don't have to go above and beyond and do a bunch of crazy things to keep GW1 alive. Small, regular updates would be huge. Any truly big update would blow everyone's minds.
One of the big problems I know the devs are concerned with is that the art tools are so old that firing them up and using them in a stable fashion is a real problem. Their code base in the game is super efficient according to the devs, so maintenance is easy, but new content is not cause of the art tools.
The idea of running through KC all parkour like was exceptionally enticing, who would have thought it'd be this long before that might just be a possibility.
The problem with making games is you see all issues everyday and your dealing with the problems of something you did long ago. So when you go to making a squeal you often want to fix all the core issues you've been dealing with, and sometimes your so focused on those problems. What you should do is focus way more on what went right fix everything you can but if your focusing on what went right you would do a better job of not letting those fixes touch what you did right. Here is an example. Secondary Profession: When making Guild Wars 2 we decided to not do secondaries, so many of our balance problems came as a result of this. It made it hard for each profession to feel different so where fighting non stop to make each profession feel different. Ontop of that all our new campaigns required new professions it was a really hard design problem. So when it came time to make a new game we said lets not do that problem again. In hindsight that call lead us to a less deck buildy game, I do think GW2 profession feels different from each other, but we let that fix to a problem really change the fundamentals of the game. The problems you bring up about skills is a deep one one I could rant for a long time ;) On profession: There was a choice we made on faction we had two choices Add Attribute lines or Add new professions. Here would be the difference New Professions Assassin: Add Core + New skills New Attribute Lines Necro Gets Shadow Arts War gets Dagger So to make an assassin you would have to be a Necro/Warrior I think the game would have been much better if we just kept adding Attribute lines rather then new professions. The problem is Professions where cooler, easier to understand, and easier to market. These are important things and in the end won out. I do always wonder what GW1 would be like if we stayed more true to magic's design and never added a new color. Another Amazing Video Wooden
Didn't expect to find an ex dev reply in the comment section. I'd love a long skill rant from you either in video form, reddit or elsewhere. I do think GW2 is a good game in its own right, even though for me it felt like a letdown early on, but that can be partially blamed on wrong expectations. Some deeper insight on what lead you to change the systems the way you did would be nice. Oh, and good luck with your new project with ManaWorks!
I am grateful and happy that someone still cares enough to 1) make videos like this one 2) post answers like this one This also keeps me hooked to the game, from time to time. This and the amazing soundtrack.
New attribute lines feels a lot like how Elite Specs ended up being done in GW2, which is a design I actually really like. It would've been a really elegant solution.
Your understanding of game design (in particular of this franchise) and capacity to convey it, is truly exceptional. If you ever come across those means to get that RPG project together you mentioned during your Super Q&A, I'd be lining up at a chance to play it. Love your work WP.
I still remember the Prophecies story-line so well. The fall of Ascalon and everything after that was amazing. Every now and then I boot Gw1 up, just to play that storyline again, such fond memories.
Yeah truly some top-notch writing on the story back then. I found myself completely disappointed with the completion of the main story in guild wars 2.... they definitely got better with the expansions but that first one just was underwhelming in comparison to guild wars 1
Prophecies had one of the best storylines of any MMO I've ever played. I don't think anything in GW2 comes close. Watching Rurik die and then having to fight him again as an undead slave to the lich ... really gives me the feels.
Thanks for making this!! Stopped playing GW1 after a few thousand hours, after most of my ingame friends had switched to GW2. Never put much thought into when and why things went wrong with the game, but this gave me some closure.
Just started Guild Wars again after 10+ years, it truly is a remarkable RPG. I never paid attention to the writing, my small gamer-boy brain wanted to kill stuff and get loot. I'm rediscovering how truly excellent this game really was, and still is.
@@gwfan1994 Same, loved it. They removed HB for some garbage Codex Arena. Man, that was such a let down. That one move made me lose all trust in Arenanet and prevented me from enjoying GW2 as a whole. I gave GW2 a serious try, but just could never get into GW2 after they ruined GW1 the way they did. It felt like betrayal to me and like the managers / teamleaders calling the shots, had no clue what made GW1 amazing.
To me Guild Wars 1 is a much better game than Guild Wars 2. I get it's very subjective but 15 years and I still keep coming back to the game after short breaks. I have so much fun playing GW1. $40 for 15 years of fun is priceless.
As long as the servers live, the game will live. I never stopped playing, it's an awesome nostalgic game! I also never had a problem with hero's, they where incredibly handy when you couldn't find enough individuals.
I have to confess something. I've never fully completed a GW1 campaign. And this recent update with 10 new skills i'll never use has made me want to go back to that game because it made me feel like somebody still cared.
I bought Factions way back and played it but I didn't get very far because I was young and didn't know English very well and I hadn't played many games back then. I didn't finish the campaign. Many years later, after I had become a GW2 veteran, I went back and tried Factions again. I still had problems with some parts of the combat since I wasn't used to it and didn't prorperly learn it at the start. But I finished it and I saw so many cool things I had no idea I had missed out on before. The Jade Sea was a special highlight for me. I'm playing it again now by the way. Sorry for rambling about my own life's story with GW1. Your comment just reminded me of it I guess. xD
I don't see the problem. Old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. GW1 is just fine as it is. EDIT: The only update I would honestly like to see is for them to adapt it so that it could be played _offline_ - Much like Phantasy Star Online did in 2000...
I just started playing GW1 again last week. I think what gamers love about GW1 is the same reason gamers love MTG (Magic the Gathering); in both games, players are able to customize their build unlike most games out there, and that extreme flexibility and customizability are so exciting and exhilarating, at least to me. This flexibility is multiplied by the number of heroes one can add to the party. MTG, enticing me to constantly try to form a "dream team". By the way, MTG refuses to die as well. I wish a company, if not Arenanet, would pick up on a GW1-type genre and run with it.
In fact my wife and I just started a complete GW1 playthrough just 2 weeks ago, coincidentally a week before the content patch^^ We both played the game many years ago (both our oldest characters are over 14 years old) but we never actually progressed much throughout the game. I basically only played Factions PvP and my wife was a die-hard pre-searing gamer. And let me tell you with the whole game ahead of us at this point we are having a blast with it. But I agree with most of what you said. In my opinion the core game was built with very little foresight when it comes to sustainability. But on the other hand while I like GW2 quite a lot it feels really shallow compared to it's predecessor. It just lacks the depth the old skill system had, where you could make your character really your own. I hope the combine the two systems in GW3, so a perk and skill tree system combined with the ability to explore the world to actually learn new skills by finding trainers and conquering bosses. They could even keep the 5/5 split between profession and weapon skills but let us have more choices. The overall skill pool in GW1 was to huge though at least to begin with. They left themselves really little headway to come up with new ideas for skills because the core ones were so varied. They should have limited themselves to 8 per attribute + 1 elite skill. That would still have made for a huge variety. Also the duplicate problem could have been omitted by implementing sort of an "attunement" questline where every profession could have grinded out skins for their skills that then fit the respective environments. That would haven given players more content and them more breating room. I really hope that they will make a GW3 at some point because I think both games have much potential but also waste much of it. Combining the best of both could make for the ultimate game. Sorry for the wall of text^^
GW1 was a PvP game at heart, and yet millions loved the PvE, the story........everything just felt so well done. Droks runs, runs to the Coast for those who were doing ascension for Survivor titles. Pre-Searing..........everything had a place and community behind each part of the game. There were plenty of players doing all content.....even though there really wasn't an end game per say on par with any real raids until factions.......sure Sorrows furnace, FoW could somewhat count. They were nothing like The Deep or Urgoz Warren. But people didn't care, the community clung to PvE just for cosmetic farming, those perfect Crystalline swords and more. Honestly if GW1 just had fishing, housing and a system around guilds holding events........it would have been amazing. GW1 should have been the perfect template in going into making GW2 instead they trashed it away and gave us what we have now. Everything feels so band aided into GW2 that it cannot be solved by elite specs or new expansions. We really need a GW3 to fix the issues of GW2 while mostly implementing GW1 as the main template.
Honestly, GW was much more a PVP game than PVE. The game ‘trained’ you for it, if it was the small 4v4 from pre to post searing, or how the 3 ascension missions in Elona had objectives based off PVP objectives (relics, time killing, defending ghost etc). That being said, I strongly believe GW was far ahead of its time in the PVP aspect (GVG and HA). If the whole e-sports thing was as big back then as it is now, GW would have been immensely popular. There are so much tactics, strategies from team based perspective to individual skill needed to win.
True, also the best PvP game I played up to day! Whole competetive scene was great! Meeting legendary Rebel Rising in MaT semifinals is the moment I will remember for a long time :)
I hadn't watched one of your videos in a while and I forgot just how good you are at your monologues, and how much care and thought goes into them. I just wanted to say that the Guild Wars community is very lucky to have you. Keep being awesome :)
Bingo. I think this is a WAY larger aspect of what made GW1 great than people realize. It allowed people to conglomerate in cities, trade/socialize/party up/find runs/etc, yet you could still go out in your own instance and do your own thing either by yourself or with your friends. This allowed community to exist and grow in a way GW2 or other games does not.
Also I completely understand the trials the devs had to go through. For us as programmers we have much smaller projects that can be relaunched and recoded in quite some manner. But for them the game had grown to such a scale that in order so set a clear path towards supporting the game for another 10 years they would have to rework most of the game. Like you said, a lot of these systems are beautiful but they have been added on top of old stuff. For the game to have a longer life cycle in the future they would have to completely start from scratch and recreate the game with all these systems in mind. All of these systems would have gotten out of hand in the next 1-2 expansions.
I completely agree with you, they made it and the long term life cycle of this game wasn't greatly planned out. Student programmer here and stuff like this you can just see the problems in the games development. Brilliant game none the less though! ahah
Everyone's here trying to justify why GW1 was dropped in favor of GW2 but honestly, I'm just wondering why GUILD VS. GUILD is not in GW2 even to this day for fucks sake.
I just recently got back into Guild Wars 1, the second game having lost a bit of it's luster for me after the 2nd expansion. Deciding to get GWAMM the timing for the new skills to be released and some life breathed back into the game has been such an absolute treat for me and a friend who I played the game together with as kids. Now we have friends who never even touched the game before buying it and playing with us and enjoying it, I hope the devs realize they have something special and it's not too late to give it a 2nd chance
Yeah, guild wars 2 just doesn't scratch the same itch that guild wars 1 did. I still love getting into Guild Wars 1 even today, it's fun, and there's literally no experience out there like it right now.
The biggest issue of GW2 is its name. Appart from the lore and names, there is nothing connecting the games. Even the world looks so different, just look at the Shiverpeaks, those arent mountains anymore in GW2. Almost my whole, very active, guild moved to GW2. 90% quit within a month. Not because the game was bad per se, but because the game was a bad Guild Wars. Without the name, this fake forced connection, we all would have thought what an amazing game this is. I cant say what would have happened later on, the real issues with GW2 would still have been there but I am 100% sure the launch would have been much smoother in regards of player retention.
They took everything that made GW1 special and threw it into the trash. It was so simple, All they needed to do was make GW1 again and fix the few things they wanted to change, like jumping, world quests, etc.Removing and replacing skill capturing and the brilliant skill system in general, grinding for chase cosmetics, actually difficult end game raid content, so many things, I still can't believe they threw it all away.
I returned to Guild Wars 2 a couple of weeks ago, giving up on it after a month or so after release. I've started playing Guild Wars 1 again. They're very different games. I still find Guild Wars 1 more engaging. Combat is very thoughtful and strategic, while in Guild Wars 2, combat is more like fast action combat. Guild Wars 2 feels far more casual in the open world, yet the end game difficulty is too hard and alienating. Guild Wars 1 was also a full product. Guild Wars 2 requires me to buy character slots, inventory expansions, etc. Their customer service is also terrible. It's not the same passionate smaller studio that made the original. The team that made Guild Wars 1 is gone and we'll never see another game like it. They wanted a mainstream product to make more money.
18:00 "until eventually GW1 was full of bizarre and inscrutable details that weighted it down" Looks at new off-attribute weapons that don't work as intended because of a mechanic that hasn't been relevant in 15 years.
That weapon attribute thing feels like the result of...not exactly lazy programming or anything, but taking an easy solution because it wouldn't matter if you did. That is, hardcoding weapons to look to specific attributes instead of looking at the weapon's own attribute so you don't have to pass data around. I wonder how easy it would be to change that?
Stef B if you mean the anniversary things like spawning power bow, I believe they are for VERY niche builds like a crit bow assassin, a splinter barrage ritualist etc
@@Kuulpb They're definitely just for nice builds yeah but when they were added, they didn't properly scale damage and crit chance with the intended attribute. That critical strikes bow would require 9 critical strikes for the base damage but would still scale with bow mastery. This has since been fixed. That mechanic has always been in the game but nobody (including the devs) really remembered because there have never been off-attribute weapons like this where it would have mattered.
I'm having a blast this anniversary event. New skills are on the verge of being broken. And that's amazing. It's a 15 year old game played mostly by veterans who had already beaten the game. And devs who worked on this update managed to make something new and exciting. I would like to see something like that every year. But I guess that's impossible. I imagine that 2-3 ANet devs had been working on this update in their spare time for several months or maybe even years.
I just came pack after a short break that lasted ~10 years. I am delighted almost as much as on that memorable day when I logged in for the first time. Now I understand much more, and enjoy this masterpiece more than I ever had before.
GW 1 for life. Cant even really put my finger on it but that game just had an immersion to it that I have not gotten from any other game, ever, maybe its the fantastic art direction? IDK, but to this day, nothing else scratches that itch...nothing, I still listen to the anthology soundtrack while I work.
Me and one of my best friends grew up with this game, we spent countless hours together in this beautiful masterpiece. And now, 14 years after we started playing, we play it more actively than ever before. And we are not alone. It obviously doesn't have as big of a fanbase as WoW or GW2, but it still has an alive and very healthy community. Highly recommend to check it out if you haven't yet, or return if you haven't played in a while. It plays as great as ever.
I tried gw 2 twice now for lets say 20 hours each. And each time the skills i could use, this time i played ele in gw2, just all felt the same and it didnt do much of a difference what order or what colour of skill i press. Then i hop back onto gw1, make a warrior in prophecies withs ome mesmer skills on the side and get my behind wooped if i dont time my sigil of health and my mana managment correctly. In that first hour my actual usage of abilities despite being much more limited than at the start of gw2, was SO much more impactful.... its just a lot of fun as well
Gw1 had SO many aspects of it that are still far superior to GW2. Even now, I still feel like I'm waiting for GW2 to do something, anything to make it feel as... well, right as GW1. GW1 didn't have the boring ass berserk meta for a start. GW1 story was lightyears ahead of whatever GW2 calls a story. GW1 had things like hard mode, better party building, value in drops, map clearing, FACTIONS. (Still my favorite to this day.) GW2 split us up after all those years as well. I don't harbor I'll will over it. Some aspects of GW2 are incredible, but it is NOT guild wars. They own the name, they can do what they like and of course can go after whatever audience, all that is fine and good. However, GW2 is a huge departure and I could never really buy in. It leaves me feeling the fault is mine, and maybe that's true...
I am playing GW2 since the first day of pre release and I still love it. Out of curiosity I got me the collector's edition of GW1 a couple years ago, bcs I wanted to experience the original story and know what the gw1 hype was all about. In the end I had the more or less opposite experience from yours. The graphics and camera movements are horrible. The maps are mostly empty. For example Lion's Arch was supposed to be the main hub, right? With a wall, a pier and a couple of tents it didn't quite strike me as the glorious capital of mankind. The skills. What do I need thousands of skills for? My character can't jump (not speaking of gliding and mounts that came with the expansions) and not even fall down a few meters to skip a long and tedious path. The story itself is indeed rather interesting. Wouldn't call it fun, but that's for each individual to decide. For lack of other players I had to rely on the henchman system to get through my personal story and even that has it's limitations. In the Prophecies story I reached a barrier in maguuma jungle when trying to protect three altars (?) which simply wasn't possible for a single player (ranger/ele). So I tried Factions instead. Here it was pretty early in the game in Kaineng when two groups of players (?) have to keep some npcs alive (I think Mhenlo is one of them) and protect them from attackers. How do you do that with an assassin/ranger)? So I cancelled that as well and moved to nightfall where I didn't even manage to leave Istan bcs I was so frustrated with all my previous failures I stopped that as well. And GW1 altogether. It can't be that I have to rely on other players to be able to play my personal story, be it an mmo or not. In general I don't see any replay value in GW1 at all nor any reason to stick around after the story. Maybe that's different for someone who started with GW1 and never played anything else, but from the perspective of someone who started with GW2 and tried out GW1 ... no. Just no. From what I've experienced nostalgia is everything GW1 has going for it, nothing less - and nothing more.
@@dorderre Alot of that will come down to personal taste. I have to give you the jumping and mobility thing, can't argue that it was a gripe from the beginning. The content however, I can tell you I've solo run nearly every bit of content in that game. It can be hard, your build can be inferior, you can and will fail. The Kaineng quest is another I have to give you, it's really easy to fail. However, soloing Zhaitan in the last mission or the final HOT mission are about on par with this issue as well. As for how empty it is, that is now 15 years later. Comparisons are hard to make between these two games in alot of ways because they are so totally different. These two games share map locations, a name, and some references but they aren't sequels. The story isn't continued. GW2 could easily be called Tyria, or Dragon Quest or any other name and not suffer but for the fact that they needed the name to not start again. In Guild Wars there were, well, guild wars for a start. Like I said earlier, it's their IP, they can do what they like but GW2 is not GW. Not the flavour, not the lore, not the history, not the difficulty, not Guild Wars. I like GW2, so I don't want to shit all over it, it does some things well. But, to try to get me to buy the loss of the core identity of the world I loved for so long, along with a game mode that failed in Warhammer online and fails to this day, useless guild halls... In the end no one blames them for improvement. What they could be blamed for is dropping everything that worked completely. It's more than nostalgia. If I had to pin point it as best I could I would maybe say that alot of us old timers saw our game end in a way that totally lacked any catharsis. We can move on, fall in love with other things, but GW1 is the one that got away and we pine for her.
@@pewpschute But that's your fault though. You're setting up certain expectations just because GW2 is called GW2 and now you feel disappointed in it. I srtaed off with GW2 and I still play it because it's fun. I did try to go back and play GW1 but it's just tedious. I understand, suer old game, but it's just boring. I'm much more happy with what GW1 became. GW2 is just better. Except for the story. Fuck the story it's really bad.
@@JoshuaGraves113 And I admitted that possibility outright. The more I think about it, the more I think my last comment struck the issue, for myself at least. In my experience GW was never given it's... exit I guess. We were clearly expected to hop right into GW2 and just continue on. That's where the issue is, in my mind. As the game progressed, as the shiny new stuff ceased to be so shiny I - and there's no way I'm alone - could clearly see that this was a total abandonment of the world I was still involved with on a daily basis. I feel as time went on a real thirst for catharsis took hold in alot of the fans of the original. And that was never addressed. You've got to remember that there were a ton of people who loved that game and for them it wasn't a 10 year old comparison. Both games existed side by side with active bases. The hall of monuments was something we were working in GW 1 to complete for things we would get to enjoy in the new game. That was based on titles. Think of the title chaser, actively completing grind in GW 1 and hops into GW2 collecting those rewards. These issues were staring us right in the face. Not a bygone comparison. GW1 was abandoned without the grand send off. This would not be an issue had GW2 been connected to GW1 in any real way. It's not. I will stand by that argument as a player who has thousands of hours in this franchise. So yeah, it's going to be personal, but there is no way I'm alone. At the end of the day our time, our devotion to the world, to the lore, to the stories never had an ending. Alot of my guildmates went back. Alot of them moved to entirely different games. We got new fans, we got a new community, and now we've got to explain ourselves to people who don't get it because it's a decade later and the people who came up in the new game in alot of cases are literally our children. That's a long time to watch the world burn. I still play the new content in GW2. I've been there the entire time and that's my take on things.
It still blows my mind on what high technical level GW1 just works. The game rarely if ever crashed at all. The game updates on the fly, servers are never really down at all. The games UI is so wonderfully adjustable and allows Mods, its amazing, almost no modern game offers that degree of freedom. The stupid sweet mini map compass allows drawing on it and the like, sweet little features that ooze love for the game. ---- Lets be frank, they could produce new content every year for GW1, actual expansions and people would totally buy them.
I used to play GW in 2005-2006 ; your analysis is very good. GvG and tournaments were so epic, too bad it's all over. The competitive side of the game was so deep ; we see games like AoE II still thriving today, and the equilibrium of the system is treated very carefully. I'd be ready to pay a cheap fee for a competitive GvG mode without fancy skins but with all skills available + pay separately for PvE campaigns were you "grind for cosmetics". And even if I may not play that much anymore, I'd definitely watch competitive games.
And if there was a rework on GW1 ; there should be should simplification. A simple and rich game with limitations and balance is best. Many skills but chosen carefully. The first GW1 was so rich in possibilities because profession combinations and each profession's limitation. In my opinion GvG was really the format to keep and promote + again, is worth a paid membership alongside the "one time purchase" PvE campaigns. + ... in my opinion why not paying micro transactions for skins in PvP mode (cool looking weapons and armors...) but that's another story and may be a problem in the long term.
I finished listening to all your points. Really really good comments :-) Hope Arena Net is listening, they actually have gold in their hands, a wonderful game to resurrect, re-balance, split PvP and PvE with various formats.
Kinda sad to see it go but the old game is still accessible and alive. Going back to it is still a blast. I hope one day we will get the ability to create own servers and play the game offline. I want to see what the community would be capable of developing out of this game for example New mods and stuff. Probably not for a while but I would love to see an online community Form around nodding and expanding the game.
I used to love guild wars 1 back in the day. It was the first online graphics based game I ever played and really blew me away when I started playing. I never really got into guild wars 2 but these videos sure do take me back.
I played Prophecies in high school. To this day, I still out on pre-sear music when I need a relaxing nap. So many good memories are tied to that music. I can still picture those leaves falling on the path from Ascalon to Ashford.
I started playing GW just before the first wintersday festival began. ecto farming with a 55 monk/trapping for FOW armor. Doing Drok Runs for extra plat with my warrior, before they nerfed how many minions you could have, the first *green item* added. I remember playing HA with people from the Consume Chicken guild (IWAY) although I stopped once I got my wolf emote. Completing Grandmaster Cartographer and Legendary Vanquisher were probably my toughest titles to get at the same time, and Elite skills for all characters, without buying it. Man...the memories, can't believe that was 17 years ago. I can't remember just how much playtime I had, but after completing all the games with all professions, I main as either Ele or Monk. it was in the low 20k hours. Could write a book about the daily life of the shenanigans that happens in the world of Tyria, some people get on the game and don't even play at all. Some people never left pre searing since the release of the game that still logged in until I retired my characters back in 2011-12 It was just after the winds of change update. It remains as the only thing I never finished in Guild Wars. "don't wand the Oni's"
i like Guild Wars 2 and i still play it, but i think i mostly play it just to see where the franchise is going. Guild Wars 1 is still one of my all time favourite games. If they could just make a small team of 5 maybe 10 people that keep working on it, making small updates here and there, damn what i'd give for that
My Brother should have declared bankruptcy from the amount of debt he put into the GW2 cash shop, he didn't despite my advice and is still paying that debt.... He is still proud he is in the top whatever% of the gw2 efficiency accounts. That's why they pivoted and made a new game.
The "complexity" was exactly was made GW1 so great. You could come back and learn MORE and as a new player you had so much to explore, it was amazing value. And you did not have to catch up at all, you could explore anything on your own pace and creep up to the endgame over a long time span. Not getting to the endgame right away was exactly what made it good, and you could grind a lot of stuff and achievements, hard mode added a MASSIVE amount of value to the game, as it made the actual game TRUELY harder, much better than what difficulty settings usually do, hard mode is an experience of its own. GW1 as a game was and still is a master piece of a game and it does so much, that the game really just needed more content. The mission packs are just too small content. Selling such tiny packages didnt roll too well, i hate microtransactions and want a big package instead.
I agree, when Guild Wars 1 first came out I was a child, so I didn't understand the game mechanics although I was competent enough to be able to do story missions thanks to the henchmen. Now I'm older and I know about builds and theory crafting and stuff, I'm coming back to the game with far more knowledge and I'm finding it far more enjoyable.
yes, absolutely .With the addition of heroes you don't even have to worry about server population ( but GW1 never "died " in terms of absence of active players ...there were always players around )
Yes, very much so, but I recommend this, Start Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North. Players I meet are amazing in the game and it is an amazing experience for the first time
Absolutely fantastic analysis WP. Arenanet for me still hold a very unique place in the pantheon of MMO devs, despite their rollercoaster direction over the past decade.
I love this WP very interesting look back onto the state of GW1, but putting on the rose coloured glasses, I think there's three things you've sort of missed with the discussion. The first is the smallest, but I think if the campaigns were walled off like that, which probably would've been a better way through in hinesight, then the easiest solution to the overpowered characters is simply to have servers or versions of the game where the balance is held across the entire game, like ending up effectively occuring. This would split the playerbase more than it already was, and you'd effectively have to have the same balance concerns overall. The second, related point, to that though, is why have the worlds combined at all in the case of the "walled garden" approach? Effectively the idea is what the serialised releases work on, selling you a seperate game every year. If you want to then play a specific meta or experiance, you just load up that client. (Assassin's Creed being the most obvious example, which is "The Ubisoft Game" is basically a genre in and of itself.) The main difference here is that you're carrying characters and experiance from game to game, which might be enough, but it's a different "sell" then the game which came to be. Thirdly, I think the major thing that you said in the conclusion but maybe stopped short of is the problem with the Arenanet of the time, and "why" GW2 has ended up so different; Anet as a studio is built on itteration. They were born out of itterating out from WoW and it's direction, which they successfully did, but they never stopped just adding systems. I have no doubt that the graveyard of ideas that the GW2 levelling/storyline progress has become is a direct result of this, and I'm not sure Anet of the day could have pulled themselves away from the notion that itteration is always a good thing. They're definitely not the only studio to do this (Blizz having each WoW expansion have "box features" that stay for one expansion then get dropped is basically the defacto model for MMO's) but I wonder if this tendancy is what makes MMO's untenable in the long run. With all that said, I love your take on it all in the video. I would love for them to create a new campaign for GW1, and playing it again after a gap is making me fall in love with Tyria all over again...thanks to anyone who pushed through reading this mass of text, hope the world is treating you well during these troubled times.
Really fantastic commentary on your point three. I think it's a really powerful observation. Thanks so much over all for the thoughts on the talking points made!
I wish they would make GW1,5 where you have some of the old target system and skill system of the old game while and the movement mechanics of the new game, singel target and 8 skills of your own choosing with 2 professions would have been AMAZING. GW1 was more orderly as oppose to the chaos of GW2. They don't need to have that many skills as in the first game, they could like you suggested add new professions but only skills for those two professions. Then add a few map related universal skills that is used only in specific areas. The skill system of the first game was what made it truly shine, the combos you could come up with was amazing
Guild Wars 1 holds a very special place in my heart. For me, while GW2 may be an updated and arguably better experience, it sadly lacks the feel or soul of what hooked me in GW1 in the first place. With new exciting upgrades going on, it was easy to not realize how much was lost as well. Some people say I'm viewing this through a nostalgia lense, but in my opinion, GW1 was always the superior game in terms of writing and hooking people into a world vast with mystery and wonder. Jumping and dodging and all this movement is nice, but the skills and stories seem to have lost their way. I really could go on for a long time about all the differences but in the end, they're both great games. I just wish GW2 was more similar to GW1 than it is different. To make me feel like I haven't abandoned an old friend but watched him grow.
I've started playing Guild Wars again when quarantine lockdown happened and I can't stop playing and thinking about it. Just looking at how many people came back to check out the new skills and weapons, shows that there is still a potential for this game to grow, if only ANet wouldn't put it to rest aka Maintenance Mode. Games like Classic WoW and Old-School Runscape are great examples.
We need a GW1 REMASTER , modern graphics, updated voice actors for everything, updated AIs for Heroes and enemies. Best game ever, massive money to gain. Nobody really wants GW2 ... cant bother to play that Zerg fest anymore.
People judge GW1 as if it was a PVE first game. It wasn't. It was a PVP focused game first and foremost, and it had the most vibrant and thrilling community dedicated to it back then... I will never forget all the fun I had doing GvG, HA and 4v4 Random Arenas... the skill system and metagame was INSANELY good, the sheer diversity of builds you could create, the focus on timing and precise execution during combat... omg there's never been anything like GW1, I miss it... GW2 is just your everyday MMO and while that's fine and has it's audience, it shouldn't even be called Guild Wars.
Well I can't agree with the discounting of the PvE element. Ascalon Pre-Searing, all the way to Kryta, then beyond. I suppose I'm saying that they were heavily invested in making a good story as well.
I played and finished Guild Wars 1 as one of the first batch of players after it came out, but at the time I as young and the whole concept of having to buy expansions at an insane rate scared me off. I finished the core campaign, played a bit of PvP, but never engaged with any of the following expansions. Maybe it was my inability to understand the unique enigmatic business model at the time and maybe it sounds stupid, but for me GW needed even more engagement from the player than other MMOs to really 'get it' and that was scary.
I Think the switch to GW2 was a good decision, but it should have been an upgraded GW1 not an entirely new game. GW2 has hardly anything in common with GW1 and that’s really sad
This is one of your best video essays, in my opinion. It relays a kind of melancholy honesty that belies careful consideration. Thank you for the perspective.
GW2 wasnt a real successor because they failed the endgame and mechanics that GW1 was good at. They did not deliever the spirit from GW1 properly, only god knows why. Anet stopped creating content because they believed they could create a real successor, but they really did make a different game.
Man I actually shed a tear at 22:20, that was my time in GW, i fought with heart and soul for my guild. I loved the whole style of the area and the faction war. it was SOOO amazing
As a GW1 and GW2 player I think the biggest sticking point is that much of what made GW1 special and unique for me as a player were wholly abandoned in GW2 instead of improved upon like we thought it would be. Sure I had my fun with GW2 as it had its own compelling ideas at times and some fun features, but I feel like it's a game that might be in the same universe, but isn't really the sequel I had hoped it would be. It never really scratched the same gameplay itches. And even then seeing how things like Lazarus and the ending for Primordus was handled, it's hard to take the game seriously as a continuation of the rich lore of GW1 and it feels more like a fanfic that sometimes works but is often rushed and sloppy. The problem GW2 has had ever since it came out is that it always had to high of marks to reach that very often was not met (look back to the manifesto). GW1 didn't have to keep doing skills, professions, etc. the same way for all it's life, the lack of persistent world did balance this in my opinion. To me all ANET did was switch out one set if perceived and real challenges with GW1 for another set of perceived and real challenges with GW2.
guild wars 1 has something special, something that is hard to explain and impossible to create on purpose however you can notice it in everyone's feelings about this game.
@@Cykelpump33 yeah it is nostalgia to, for sure, but I did play a lot of games during my life, and those years (2005-2010) and the way I feel when I play them again , or watch a video, or talk about them with some friends is way different. GW 1 was a good and special game, GW 2 is also a good game, but it lacks something.
Beautiful discussion of the good and bad of the game. All I have to offer is this: imagine the balls it would take and the hype it would generate if ANet went back to GW1 development and started what is effectively an alternate timeline separate from the one that leads to GW2. A totally different set of circumstances that don't have to lead to the sequel game, instead something new that doesn't keep them pinned to a predetermined destination.
What they COULD have done was the Lineage II technique. Keep the game and mechanic, just with a new graphics engine. It gets rid of the issue of legacy software, yet keeps what made the game unique. Guild Wars 2 isn't Guild Wars except for lore.
WoW Classic exists. Anet should maybe consider that GW1 is worth bringing back to life. That maybe, just maybe there is still enough interest in the original game.
god this game was so good. so far ahead of its time. I'm considering re-playing through the campaigns on fresh characters. I'm actually not sure that I finished factions or nightfall back when I played at 12-13 years old. I shared an account with my brother and its likely he played some of the missions and I missed some or I'm not sure if we even finished them all together. i mostly just played RA / TA and twinked in the lvl 10 pvp in ascalon arenas (it was by far my favorite, like 30-50% of the playerbase was twinks who would get run to endgame zones to get max armor or get a pet deathleveled to 20 over a couple hours before taming it)
despite nostalgia I have two reasons why guildwars 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. First i didnt need to pay for a sub "as a kid this was HUGE". Second the fact that you could come up with builds on your own that wernt in the build wiki was crazy. Because of this Ive met a few people that make game breaking builds for both PVP and PVE that were never patched. Guildwars 1 was a short lived sort of wild west where in my mind if you were creative and determined you could overcome your goals.
For some of us - GW1 never died.... And some of us never left. I would love if Anet would come back and expand the game more. Id definitely throw more money at the game.
I’m not mad anet left gw1 and moved on, I’m mad that gw2 is nothing like gw1. The skills the armor is far different from gw1. In gw1 I had several builds I switch to, in gw2 I can’t do that, I’m tired of using the same build over and over again, also I like being a healer
Personally I think the root mistake was marketting...as soon as you brand the new one guild wars TWO, its the death of the first game. You just won't see any sort of large in flux of new players to the "old one" when there's is literally a sequel also on the market with more advanced features and graphics. They should have made GW2 a different title altogether with a shared lore but NOT a sequel to GW1 so that both games can live side by side.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 89 | คู่เอก "ยอดไอคิว vs คิริลล์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3vYkHJ_5Ig/mqdefault.jpg)
I've started playing GW1 from scratch again after 10 years. Let me tell you, this game has aged like a fine wine
I just did the same, finally got to making my Dervish I've been meaning to make since Nightfall! Best decision ever!
Ooh yes it has
Milk for me.
@@raylanodin6546 you're right no one cares, also i'm guessing this is a scam bot lmaooo
My favorite online game ever but I'm biased it's the first I really dove into at my best I went with 4 randoms in ra for 30 straight wins!
The fact that ALL the content was released within 2 years actually blew my mind. While I was IN it, it felt like it was going forever?!
probably because you were a lot younger back then, so 2 years felt like ages.
@@schizophreniegenie 2 years for a game like gw are nothing man.
There is no death of Guild Wars 1. I just re-installed it and am starting all over again. The memories are undeniable.
1 year later and I agree! I just bought the whole pack for 40 bucks and have sunk 10 hours already! I'm so excited to be back. 12 years away and I never even beat prophecies back then. The story is so good and the lore so amazing.
@@randalthor6872 i'm going to email ArenaNet to get my account back, i completely forgot the email i used for it so many years ago xD i'm looking forward to start playing it again
me who suffering to install a 5GB game with 400kbps and dreaming to install gw 2 with the 75GB app size
I just did that and went UW solo farmin. Literally the most boring thing you could do in any mmorpg is just so relaxing and intriguing in gw1
It is about time someone develop "Guild Wars 1" 2
It's time for a fourth expansion, maybe standalone again.
@@hubertuswine Fourth Campaign, or a second cross-expansion.
too bad i can only like this comment once
Honestly I think an entirely new game would be best. Keep the immersive fantasy world, keep the double profession and the low damage/health numbers so both PVP & PVE can work well, but increase the pace and reduce area sizes so it feels more modern
Everyone now is running multiple speedboosts (through skills and consumables) because the walks are too long compared to modern experiences
Make gw1 with gw2 engine 😂. Maybe not, it's a bit laggy, maybe a different engine. But it would bring it a new life.
Anybody else seeing a GW1 resurgence recently? Folk I haven't seen online in nearly a decade coming out of the woodwork. It's kinda awesome!
Probably because of the steam release
@@Steph1 Guild wars 1 has been on steam for along time
I came back just by watching Peter kadars videos randomly on my TH-cam feed, after being gone for 6-7yrs was great coming back.
2024 just dived back in. It's still great and aged very well.
I loved Factions. Depresses me Guild Wars 2 wasn’t nearly as fun and I couldn’t get into it
I remember being a 13 year old kid sitting in the walmart aisle reading the game box for Guild Wars over and over again before finaly buying it with some birthday money later that year. My game of choice at the time was FF11. Gw changed my life, coming from the grindfest of ff11 (as much as I loved that game) I was in awe at being "max level" so quick. Like you, I love GW1. Bit, unlike you I adore GW2. GW2 feels like the game that GW1 wanted to be but couldn't. Maybe that's why, i don't see GW2 as a sequel. I see GW2 as GW: Online. GW was an amazing single player rpg, with multiplayer hubs a la Monster Hunter, but a shitty mmo.
Cantha is coming to GW2 in the next expansion, so it might be interesting to see the changes at least.
GW2 while good, is a bait and switch for big gw1 fans. It LOOKS like guild wars, but the gameplay is so different, the questing so different, the focus so different. The damn cancer cash shop etc. Its a good game in its own, but when i play guild wars 1, it kinda makes me irritated about 2.
Guild Wars 2 just didn't resonate with me. It's ashame because I love the lore. I just didn't think it was fun to play.
I really wish GW1 hadn't been cancelled in order to make way for GW2.
Same, i still have some fun here and there on JQ on sundays, but not* too often :c
I'm clicking on this video
hear the music
tears come to my eyes and i get nostalgic
Hahaha that fluttery flute sound gives me butterflies
Me too, except that I never even really played GW1.
I give credit to the music itself. It really is powerful.
Me too fam. I’m considering getting out my old PC and playing GW1 in my free time.
I feelyou man, think8ng about jump8ng backinto it and letting my girl have a taste of it.. best mmo ive ever played, it just sucks i lost my account :(
Not dead to me, started new characters a month or two ago and bought my son of 9 years old an account, training up the new generation with a low learning curve game, teaming up to go through missions and having fun. Making it even more fun and immersive through little things like yelling "Run, just run, I'll hold them off a little!!" while running from the destroyers during the first Eye of the North quest to get there. :)
literally just built a pc for my sons 9th and got him a guildwars acc too :')
In a few years, its just gonna be a guilds hosted by Dads and their Kids.
@@paradoxs8116 Here hoping servers are still running in 9 years :D
ANet needs to watch this. I think, if not a return to GW1, a new game that carries it's legacy would be excellent.
Honestly, I do have hope that Anet will re create a similar game like OGW. With a cap lvl at 20 again and just use the same foundations from GW. Maybe not Anet but another company who takes interest and inspiration from GW1
@@armandozertuche4054 A Guild Wars Story: In-between Legends could be like a revamped GW1 with the same combat as GW1, but with the beginning of combat skills from GW2 twist. Why not have a warrior, monk, AND guardian in the same game? Why not introduce the greatsword and torch and horn weapons with new skills? Why not show with lore, what happened with the evolution of each class? A somber story can be held with a Guild Wars 1.5 (kinda) game as we go through the story and see the landscape before our eyes change and drown as the inevitable ending of the story reaches its pinnacle (The rise of the dragons). We could finally explore the left-out god-realms that wait in vacancy and then we watch or find out just why they abandon the heroes they made. We can watch what happens to the ministry of purity and the changes that closes cantha's borders. There is 200+ years of lore we can catch up on... but will ANET take the opportunity to establish a better connection between the games and their styles, respectively? ... probably not... but some of us can hope that one day they do.
@@armandozertuche4054 They can revive the gw1 original servers and the whole universe, they can revamp remester the game
GW2 introduced me to the franchise. Then I strated playing GW1 in 2014 and it became one of my favorite games ever - and it remained until today. It is more than nostalgia, something is there that you don't find anywhere else. Today I play both games and appreciate them for what they are.
Legit question : How do one start playing GW1 after only playing GW2 ?
@@vukkulvar9769 I think I started because of the Hall of Monuments rewards. As it often is, you forget pretty fast about the older graphics, limited control and so and you start immersing yourself in the world and start enjoying the game and it's mechanics as they are. I tend to go back to older games and be able to enjoy them. I found that pretty graphics isn't the most important element to me in a game (I'd rather prefer it running smooth for one). Another thing that also helped getting into GW1 is, that it shares a lot of it soundtracks with GW2 (or the other way around rather) which helped me feeling "at home" immediatly.
Wow... I gave Gw1 several chances and always found myself throwing it away. Garbage WoW clone with tons of annoyances.
@@miljororforsprakpartiet290 I really like classic wow too. When I was younger and tried GW1 out when it first released, it had no chance against WoW. WoW back then was just the better game in so many aspects. I only later (2014) started to like it for what it was. It definitly isnt a WoW clone, though. They are totally different games.
@@TheDarkmining Heh, yeah, I didn't actually get into WoW tbh. The UI though, which is something a noob gets the first impression of, feels straight away copied from WoW, as well as the blurry graphics.
I was never really that excited by new features or systems (in this timeline, or the Utopian timeline).
At this point I would be beyond excited about literally any new piece of content in gw1. And I think others agree, evidenced by the massive spike from this small update.
Gw1 players have managed to play the same content for over a decade and still enjoy it. Something as simple as a single mission or new quest in an existing zone would feel like an expansion at this point.
That is so true. Look at this small update - you would think it was an expansion with how many people are back. If anything, I hope Anet sees this too. It means they don't have to go above and beyond and do a bunch of crazy things to keep GW1 alive. Small, regular updates would be huge. Any truly big update would blow everyone's minds.
Back to bay 6 babay!
One of the big problems I know the devs are concerned with is that the art tools are so old that firing them up and using them in a stable fashion is a real problem. Their code base in the game is super efficient according to the devs, so maintenance is easy, but new content is not cause of the art tools.
The idea of running through KC all parkour like was exceptionally enticing, who would have thought it'd be this long before that might just be a possibility.
It's been 10 years since I played it. I have forgotten a lot of things , and it feels like a new game.
15 years of playing and I just learned you can see and add heroes via party search at 7:51
I was today days old when I found out.
Hahaha xD
Lmao same here.
If you type LPF or GLF your text will appear in party search also because you are Looking For Party or a Group Looking For someone/party
WAT
new content or not, i'll play gw1 till the day the servers go down.
The problem with making games is you see all issues everyday and your dealing with the problems of something you did long ago. So when you go to making a squeal you often want to fix all the core issues you've been dealing with, and sometimes your so focused on those problems. What you should do is focus way more on what went right fix everything you can but if your focusing on what went right you would do a better job of not letting those fixes touch what you did right. Here is an example.
Secondary Profession: When making Guild Wars 2 we decided to not do secondaries, so many of our balance problems came as a result of this. It made it hard for each profession to feel different so where fighting non stop to make each profession feel different. Ontop of that all our new campaigns required new professions it was a really hard design problem. So when it came time to make a new game we said lets not do that problem again. In hindsight that call lead us to a less deck buildy game, I do think GW2 profession feels different from each other, but we let that fix to a problem really change the fundamentals of the game.
The problems you bring up about skills is a deep one one I could rant for a long time ;)
On profession: There was a choice we made on faction we had two choices
Add Attribute lines or Add new professions. Here would be the difference
New Professions
Assassin: Add Core + New skills
New Attribute Lines
Necro Gets Shadow Arts
War gets Dagger
So to make an assassin you would have to be a Necro/Warrior
I think the game would have been much better if we just kept adding Attribute lines rather then new professions. The problem is Professions where cooler, easier to understand, and easier to market. These are important things and in the end won out. I do always wonder what GW1 would be like if we stayed more true to magic's design and never added a new color.
Another Amazing Video Wooden
Didn't expect to find an ex dev reply in the comment section.
I'd love a long skill rant from you either in video form, reddit or elsewhere.
I do think GW2 is a good game in its own right, even though for me it felt like a letdown early on, but that can be partially blamed on wrong expectations. Some deeper insight on what lead you to change the systems the way you did would be nice.
Oh, and good luck with your new project with ManaWorks!
I am grateful and happy that someone still cares enough to
1) make videos like this one
2) post answers like this one
This also keeps me hooked to the game, from time to time. This and the amazing soundtrack.
New attribute lines feels a lot like how Elite Specs ended up being done in GW2, which is a design I actually really like. It would've been a really elegant solution.
@@Lihinel Thank you, yeah I'm a bit of a Wooden Potatos Super fan : )
@@lorenzopiscitelli9504
Your understanding of game design (in particular of this franchise) and capacity to convey it, is truly exceptional. If you ever come across those means to get that RPG project together you mentioned during your Super Q&A, I'd be lining up at a chance to play it. Love your work WP.
I just logged into GW1 and the nostalgia is amazing...I forgot how much I focused on getting all my characters maxed and perfected....god I love it!
I still remember the Prophecies story-line so well. The fall of Ascalon and everything after that was amazing. Every now and then I boot Gw1 up, just to play that storyline again, such fond memories.
Yeah truly some top-notch writing on the story back then. I found myself completely disappointed with the completion of the main story in guild wars 2.... they definitely got better with the expansions but that first one just was underwhelming in comparison to guild wars 1
Prophecies had one of the best storylines of any MMO I've ever played. I don't think anything in GW2 comes close. Watching Rurik die and then having to fight him again as an undead slave to the lich ... really gives me the feels.
The first time I found Gwen's gravestone in gw2 I almost cried
"Damn Char snuck up on me while I was repairing the trebuchet." 🙂 one of my favorite silly scenes.
Ah yes...and the grueling journey over the shiverpeaks....I still remember feeling the bitter, unforgiving climate sitting in my computer chair.
Gw will be always better than Gw2. A great game, endless and amazing. With 40€ you can buy THOUSANDS hours of game. Must buy, in may 2020 too.
I bought it again today, after 10 years and I'm having a blast.
So much fun.
Thanks for making this!! Stopped playing GW1 after a few thousand hours, after most of my ingame friends had switched to GW2. Never put much thought into when and why things went wrong with the game, but this gave me some closure.
Just started Guild Wars again after 10+ years, it truly is a remarkable RPG. I never paid attention to the writing, my small gamer-boy brain wanted to kill stuff and get loot. I'm rediscovering how truly excellent this game really was, and still is.
Its me, I'm that die-hard hero battles fan.
too sad I catched up on HB so late. only managed to make exactly 125pts for rank 1 before it ended haha
Most fun i had in GW1.
I was so mad when they deleted it.
if there was ever a time when TA / HB is relevant, its when the player base is lower.
@@gwfan1994 Same, loved it. They removed HB for some garbage Codex Arena. Man, that was such a let down. That one move made me lose all trust in Arenanet and prevented me from enjoying GW2 as a whole. I gave GW2 a serious try, but just could never get into GW2 after they ruined GW1 the way they did. It felt like betrayal to me and like the managers / teamleaders calling the shots, had no clue what made GW1 amazing.
yeah. i didnt understand it ether. i wasnt good in pvp. but this was the modus i was mostly playing because i could sometimes win with my assassin :P
To me Guild Wars 1 is a much better game than Guild Wars 2. I get it's very subjective but 15 years and I still keep coming back to the game after short breaks. I have so much fun playing GW1. $40 for 15 years of fun is priceless.
As long as the servers live, the game will live. I never stopped playing, it's an awesome nostalgic game!
I also never had a problem with hero's, they where incredibly handy when you couldn't find enough individuals.
Hell, heroes usually outperformed many people when the game was in it's hayday.
@@Zeivusgaming hahaha very, very true my friend!
I have to confess something. I've never fully completed a GW1 campaign. And this recent update with 10 new skills i'll never use has made me want to go back to that game because it made me feel like somebody still cared.
I bought Factions way back and played it but I didn't get very far because I was young and didn't know English very well and I hadn't played many games back then. I didn't finish the campaign. Many years later, after I had become a GW2 veteran, I went back and tried Factions again. I still had problems with some parts of the combat since I wasn't used to it and didn't prorperly learn it at the start. But I finished it and I saw so many cool things I had no idea I had missed out on before. The Jade Sea was a special highlight for me.
I'm playing it again now by the way.
Sorry for rambling about my own life's story with GW1. Your comment just reminded me of it I guess. xD
if your going to play ill play with ya
Did you enjoy it?
I lived 6 years of my life playing GW1. It was very memorable and met so many nice people.
I still log on to cherish those memories.
I don't see the problem. Old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. GW1 is just fine as it is.
EDIT: The only update I would honestly like to see is for them to adapt it so that it could be played _offline_ - Much like Phantasy Star Online did in 2000...
I just started playing GW1 again last week. I think what gamers love about GW1 is the same reason gamers love MTG (Magic the Gathering); in both games, players are able to customize their build unlike most games out there, and that extreme flexibility and customizability are so exciting and exhilarating, at least to me. This flexibility is multiplied by the number of heroes one can add to the party. MTG, enticing me to constantly try to form a "dream team".
By the way, MTG refuses to die as well. I wish a company, if not Arenanet, would pick up on a GW1-type genre and run with it.
In fact my wife and I just started a complete GW1 playthrough just 2 weeks ago, coincidentally a week before the content patch^^ We both played the game many years ago (both our oldest characters are over 14 years old) but we never actually progressed much throughout the game. I basically only played Factions PvP and my wife was a die-hard pre-searing gamer. And let me tell you with the whole game ahead of us at this point we are having a blast with it. But I agree with most of what you said. In my opinion the core game was built with very little foresight when it comes to sustainability. But on the other hand while I like GW2 quite a lot it feels really shallow compared to it's predecessor. It just lacks the depth the old skill system had, where you could make your character really your own. I hope the combine the two systems in GW3, so a perk and skill tree system combined with the ability to explore the world to actually learn new skills by finding trainers and conquering bosses. They could even keep the 5/5 split between profession and weapon skills but let us have more choices. The overall skill pool in GW1 was to huge though at least to begin with. They left themselves really little headway to come up with new ideas for skills because the core ones were so varied. They should have limited themselves to 8 per attribute + 1 elite skill. That would still have made for a huge variety. Also the duplicate problem could have been omitted by implementing sort of an "attunement" questline where every profession could have grinded out skins for their skills that then fit the respective environments. That would haven given players more content and them more breating room. I really hope that they will make a GW3 at some point because I think both games have much potential but also waste much of it. Combining the best of both could make for the ultimate game. Sorry for the wall of text^^
That's a pretty epic story. Love the directions both of you went.
GW1 was a PvP game at heart, and yet millions loved the PvE, the story........everything just felt so well done. Droks runs, runs to the Coast for those who were doing ascension for Survivor titles. Pre-Searing..........everything had a place and community behind each part of the game. There were plenty of players doing all content.....even though there really wasn't an end game per say on par with any real raids until factions.......sure Sorrows furnace, FoW could somewhat count. They were nothing like The Deep or Urgoz Warren. But people didn't care, the community clung to PvE just for cosmetic farming, those perfect Crystalline swords and more. Honestly if GW1 just had fishing, housing and a system around guilds holding events........it would have been amazing. GW1 should have been the perfect template in going into making GW2 instead they trashed it away and gave us what we have now. Everything feels so band aided into GW2 that it cannot be solved by elite specs or new expansions. We really need a GW3 to fix the issues of GW2 while mostly implementing GW1 as the main template.
Honestly, GW was much more a PVP game than PVE. The game ‘trained’ you for it, if it was the small 4v4 from pre to post searing, or how the 3 ascension missions in Elona had objectives based off PVP objectives (relics, time killing, defending ghost etc).
That being said, I strongly believe GW was far ahead of its time in the PVP aspect (GVG and HA). If the whole e-sports thing was as big back then as it is now, GW would have been immensely popular. There are so much tactics, strategies from team based perspective to individual skill needed to win.
Agreed. You'd need a sligthly higher skill ceiling / playmaking potential tho.
True, also the best PvP game I played up to day! Whole competetive scene was great! Meeting legendary Rebel Rising in MaT semifinals is the moment I will remember for a long time :)
Fat Mitch I started playing again and the game is super active! HA and GVG is still alive!!
The dungeons speedclear runners would like to differ 😂
@@T3AMKILL Yea but if I haven't played in 10 years will any guild take me xD
Guild Wars was a beautiful time for me. I'll always remember it.
I hadn't watched one of your videos in a while and I forgot just how good you are at your monologues, and how much care and thought goes into them. I just wanted to say that the Guild Wars community is very lucky to have you. Keep being awesome :)
the thing is: we love the private instances and the public cities
Bingo. I think this is a WAY larger aspect of what made GW1 great than people realize. It allowed people to conglomerate in cities, trade/socialize/party up/find runs/etc, yet you could still go out in your own instance and do your own thing either by yourself or with your friends. This allowed community to exist and grow in a way GW2 or other games does not.
Also I completely understand the trials the devs had to go through. For us as programmers we have much smaller projects that can be relaunched and recoded in quite some manner. But for them the game had grown to such a scale that in order so set a clear path towards supporting the game for another 10 years they would have to rework most of the game.
Like you said, a lot of these systems are beautiful but they have been added on top of old stuff. For the game to have a longer life cycle in the future they would have to completely start from scratch and recreate the game with all these systems in mind. All of these systems would have gotten out of hand in the next 1-2 expansions.
I completely agree with you, they made it and the long term life cycle of this game wasn't greatly planned out. Student programmer here and stuff like this you can just see the problems in the games development. Brilliant game none the less though! ahah
Everyone's here trying to justify why GW1 was dropped in favor of GW2 but honestly, I'm just wondering why GUILD VS. GUILD is not in GW2 even to this day for fucks sake.
banning old abilities is the worst idea I have ever heard of
I just recently got back into Guild Wars 1, the second game having lost a bit of it's luster for me after the 2nd expansion. Deciding to get GWAMM the timing for the new skills to be released and some life breathed back into the game has been such an absolute treat for me and a friend who I played the game together with as kids. Now we have friends who never even touched the game before buying it and playing with us and enjoying it, I hope the devs realize they have something special and it's not too late to give it a 2nd chance
Yeah, guild wars 2 just doesn't scratch the same itch that guild wars 1 did. I still love getting into Guild Wars 1 even today, it's fun, and there's literally no experience out there like it right now.
The biggest issue of GW2 is its name. Appart from the lore and names, there is nothing connecting the games. Even the world looks so different, just look at the Shiverpeaks, those arent mountains anymore in GW2. Almost my whole, very active, guild moved to GW2. 90% quit within a month. Not because the game was bad per se, but because the game was a bad Guild Wars. Without the name, this fake forced connection, we all would have thought what an amazing game this is.
I cant say what would have happened later on, the real issues with GW2 would still have been there but I am 100% sure the launch would have been much smoother in regards of player retention.
They took everything that made GW1 special and threw it into the trash. It was so simple, All they needed to do was make GW1 again and fix the few things they wanted to change, like jumping, world quests, etc.Removing and replacing skill capturing and the brilliant skill system in general, grinding for chase cosmetics, actually difficult end game raid content, so many things, I still can't believe they threw it all away.
Alliance Battle was the most fun I've ever had in PVP on a MMO and I pray for a mode like it to return in the next GW2 expansion.
I returned to Guild Wars 2 a couple of weeks ago, giving up on it after a month or so after release. I've started playing Guild Wars 1 again. They're very different games. I still find Guild Wars 1 more engaging. Combat is very thoughtful and strategic, while in Guild Wars 2, combat is more like fast action combat. Guild Wars 2 feels far more casual in the open world, yet the end game difficulty is too hard and alienating. Guild Wars 1 was also a full product. Guild Wars 2 requires me to buy character slots, inventory expansions, etc. Their customer service is also terrible. It's not the same passionate smaller studio that made the original. The team that made Guild Wars 1 is gone and we'll never see another game like it. They wanted a mainstream product to make more money.
18:00 "until eventually GW1 was full of bizarre and inscrutable details that weighted it down"
Looks at new off-attribute weapons that don't work as intended because of a mechanic that hasn't been relevant in 15 years.
That weapon attribute thing feels like the result of...not exactly lazy programming or anything, but taking an easy solution because it wouldn't matter if you did. That is, hardcoding weapons to look to specific attributes instead of looking at the weapon's own attribute so you don't have to pass data around. I wonder how easy it would be to change that?
Stef B if you mean the anniversary things like spawning power bow, I believe they are for VERY niche builds like a crit bow assassin, a splinter barrage ritualist etc
@@Kuulpb They're definitely just for nice builds yeah but when they were added, they didn't properly scale damage and crit chance with the intended attribute. That critical strikes bow would require 9 critical strikes for the base damage but would still scale with bow mastery. This has since been fixed.
That mechanic has always been in the game but nobody (including the devs) really remembered because there have never been off-attribute weapons like this where it would have mattered.
I'm having a blast this anniversary event. New skills are on the verge of being broken. And that's amazing. It's a 15 year old game played mostly by veterans who had already beaten the game. And devs who worked on this update managed to make something new and exciting. I would like to see something like that every year. But I guess that's impossible. I imagine that 2-3 ANet devs had been working on this update in their spare time for several months or maybe even years.
I just started playing GW1 yesterday again. I am loving it. The last time I played it was 10 years ago. I am having blast!
going to do the same :) a;ĥa tester here and me to did not play for around 10 years
I just came pack after a short break that lasted ~10 years. I am delighted almost as much as on that memorable day when I logged in for the first time. Now I understand much more, and enjoy this masterpiece more than I ever had before.
GW 1 for life. Cant even really put my finger on it but that game just had an immersion to it that I have not gotten from any other game, ever, maybe its the fantastic art direction? IDK, but to this day, nothing else scratches that itch...nothing, I still listen to the anthology soundtrack while I work.
I prefer this over gw2
Game just functions and is setup for the way I like to play.
Me and one of my best friends grew up with this game, we spent countless hours together in this beautiful masterpiece. And now, 14 years after we started playing, we play it more actively than ever before. And we are not alone. It obviously doesn't have as big of a fanbase as WoW or GW2, but it still has an alive and very healthy community. Highly recommend to check it out if you haven't yet, or return if you haven't played in a while. It plays as great as ever.
I tried gw 2 twice now for lets say 20 hours each.
And each time the skills i could use, this time i played ele in gw2, just all felt the same and it didnt do much of a difference what order or what colour of skill i press. Then i hop back onto gw1, make a warrior in prophecies withs ome mesmer skills on the side and get my behind wooped if i dont time my sigil of health and my mana managment correctly. In that first hour my actual usage of abilities despite being much more limited than at the start of gw2, was SO much more impactful.... its just a lot of fun as well
Gw1 had SO many aspects of it that are still far superior to GW2. Even now, I still feel like I'm waiting for GW2 to do something, anything to make it feel as... well, right as GW1. GW1 didn't have the boring ass berserk meta for a start. GW1 story was lightyears ahead of whatever GW2 calls a story. GW1 had things like hard mode, better party building, value in drops, map clearing, FACTIONS. (Still my favorite to this day.) GW2 split us up after all those years as well. I don't harbor I'll will over it. Some aspects of GW2 are incredible, but it is NOT guild wars. They own the name, they can do what they like and of course can go after whatever audience, all that is fine and good. However, GW2 is a huge departure and I could never really buy in. It leaves me feeling the fault is mine, and maybe that's true...
I am playing GW2 since the first day of pre release and I still love it. Out of curiosity I got me the collector's edition of GW1 a couple years ago, bcs I wanted to experience the original story and know what the gw1 hype was all about.
In the end I had the more or less opposite experience from yours.
The graphics and camera movements are horrible. The maps are mostly empty. For example Lion's Arch was supposed to be the main hub, right? With a wall, a pier and a couple of tents it didn't quite strike me as the glorious capital of mankind.
The skills. What do I need thousands of skills for?
My character can't jump (not speaking of gliding and mounts that came with the expansions) and not even fall down a few meters to skip a long and tedious path.
The story itself is indeed rather interesting. Wouldn't call it fun, but that's for each individual to decide. For lack of other players I had to rely on the henchman system to get through my personal story and even that has it's limitations. In the Prophecies story I reached a barrier in maguuma jungle when trying to protect three altars (?) which simply wasn't possible for a single player (ranger/ele). So I tried Factions instead. Here it was pretty early in the game in Kaineng when two groups of players (?) have to keep some npcs alive (I think Mhenlo is one of them) and protect them from attackers. How do you do that with an assassin/ranger)? So I cancelled that as well and moved to nightfall where I didn't even manage to leave Istan bcs I was so frustrated with all my previous failures I stopped that as well. And GW1 altogether.
It can't be that I have to rely on other players to be able to play my personal story, be it an mmo or not.
In general I don't see any replay value in GW1 at all nor any reason to stick around after the story.
Maybe that's different for someone who started with GW1 and never played anything else, but from the perspective of someone who started with GW2 and tried out GW1 ... no. Just no.
From what I've experienced nostalgia is everything GW1 has going for it, nothing less - and nothing more.
@@dorderre Alot of that will come down to personal taste. I have to give you the jumping and mobility thing, can't argue that it was a gripe from the beginning. The content however, I can tell you I've solo run nearly every bit of content in that game. It can be hard, your build can be inferior, you can and will fail. The Kaineng quest is another I have to give you, it's really easy to fail. However, soloing Zhaitan in the last mission or the final HOT mission are about on par with this issue as well. As for how empty it is, that is now 15 years later. Comparisons are hard to make between these two games in alot of ways because they are so totally different. These two games share map locations, a name, and some references but they aren't sequels. The story isn't continued. GW2 could easily be called Tyria, or Dragon Quest or any other name and not suffer but for the fact that they needed the name to not start again. In Guild Wars there were, well, guild wars for a start. Like I said earlier, it's their IP, they can do what they like but GW2 is not GW. Not the flavour, not the lore, not the history, not the difficulty, not Guild Wars. I like GW2, so I don't want to shit all over it, it does some things well. But, to try to get me to buy the loss of the core identity of the world I loved for so long, along with a game mode that failed in Warhammer online and fails to this day, useless guild halls... In the end no one blames them for improvement. What they could be blamed for is dropping everything that worked completely. It's more than nostalgia. If I had to pin point it as best I could I would maybe say that alot of us old timers saw our game end in a way that totally lacked any catharsis. We can move on, fall in love with other things, but GW1 is the one that got away and we pine for her.
@@pewpschute But that's your fault though. You're setting up certain expectations just because GW2 is called GW2 and now you feel disappointed in it. I srtaed off with GW2 and I still play it because it's fun. I did try to go back and play GW1 but it's just tedious. I understand, suer old game, but it's just boring. I'm much more happy with what GW1 became. GW2 is just better. Except for the story. Fuck the story it's really bad.
@@JoshuaGraves113 And I admitted that possibility outright. The more I think about it, the more I think my last comment struck the issue, for myself at least. In my experience GW was never given it's... exit I guess. We were clearly expected to hop right into GW2 and just continue on. That's where the issue is, in my mind. As the game progressed, as the shiny new stuff ceased to be so shiny I - and there's no way I'm alone - could clearly see that this was a total abandonment of the world I was still involved with on a daily basis. I feel as time went on a real thirst for catharsis took hold in alot of the fans of the original. And that was never addressed. You've got to remember that there were a ton of people who loved that game and for them it wasn't a 10 year old comparison. Both games existed side by side with active bases. The hall of monuments was something we were working in GW 1 to complete for things we would get to enjoy in the new game. That was based on titles. Think of the title chaser, actively completing grind in GW 1 and hops into GW2 collecting those rewards. These issues were staring us right in the face. Not a bygone comparison. GW1 was abandoned without the grand send off. This would not be an issue had GW2 been connected to GW1 in any real way. It's not. I will stand by that argument as a player who has thousands of hours in this franchise. So yeah, it's going to be personal, but there is no way I'm alone. At the end of the day our time, our devotion to the world, to the lore, to the stories never had an ending. Alot of my guildmates went back. Alot of them moved to entirely different games. We got new fans, we got a new community, and now we've got to explain ourselves to people who don't get it because it's a decade later and the people who came up in the new game in alot of cases are literally our children. That's a long time to watch the world burn. I still play the new content in GW2. I've been there the entire time and that's my take on things.
It still blows my mind on what high technical level GW1 just works.
The game rarely if ever crashed at all.
The game updates on the fly, servers are never really down at all.
The games UI is so wonderfully adjustable and allows Mods, its amazing, almost no modern game offers that degree of freedom.
The stupid sweet mini map compass allows drawing on it and the like, sweet little features that ooze love for the game.
----
Lets be frank, they could produce new content every year for GW1, actual expansions and people would totally buy them.
I used to play GW in 2005-2006 ; your analysis is very good. GvG and tournaments were so epic, too bad it's all over. The competitive side of the game was so deep ; we see games like AoE II still thriving today, and the equilibrium of the system is treated very carefully. I'd be ready to pay a cheap fee for a competitive GvG mode without fancy skins but with all skills available + pay separately for PvE campaigns were you "grind for cosmetics". And even if I may not play that much anymore, I'd definitely watch competitive games.
And if there was a rework on GW1 ; there should be should simplification. A simple and rich game with limitations and balance is best. Many skills but chosen carefully. The first GW1 was so rich in possibilities because profession combinations and each profession's limitation. In my opinion GvG was really the format to keep and promote + again, is worth a paid membership alongside the "one time purchase" PvE campaigns. + ... in my opinion why not paying micro transactions for skins in PvP mode (cool looking weapons and armors...) but that's another story and may be a problem in the long term.
I finished listening to all your points. Really really good comments :-)
Hope Arena Net is listening, they actually have gold in their hands, a wonderful game to resurrect, re-balance, split PvP and PvE with various formats.
Thanks so much David!
Kinda sad to see it go but the old game is still accessible and alive. Going back to it is still a blast. I hope one day we will get the ability to create own servers and play the game offline. I want to see what the community would be capable of developing out of this game for example New mods and stuff. Probably not for a while but I would love to see an online community Form around nodding and expanding the game.
best game ever made
That guild wars faction music brings back so many feels. If they ever bring back Cantha, i'll play GW again.
Next gw2 expansion is teased to be Cantha!
I used to love guild wars 1 back in the day. It was the first online graphics based game I ever played and really blew me away when I started playing. I never really got into guild wars 2 but these videos sure do take me back.
I played Prophecies in high school. To this day, I still out on pre-sear music when I need a relaxing nap. So many good memories are tied to that music. I can still picture those leaves falling on the path from Ascalon to Ashford.
One of the only MMOs Ive ever enjoyed was Guild Wars 1. There hasn't been any game like that since
It's still there! I just started playing again, so good
@@BearsnBrews I need to get back into it, I love that game
I started playing GW just before the first wintersday festival began. ecto farming with a 55 monk/trapping for FOW armor. Doing Drok Runs for extra plat with my warrior, before they nerfed how many minions you could have, the first *green item* added. I remember playing HA with people from the Consume Chicken guild (IWAY) although I stopped once I got my wolf emote.
Completing Grandmaster Cartographer and Legendary Vanquisher were probably my toughest titles to get at the same time, and Elite skills for all characters, without buying it.
Man...the memories, can't believe that was 17 years ago. I can't remember just how much playtime I had, but after completing all the games with all professions, I main as either Ele or Monk. it was in the low 20k hours.
Could write a book about the daily life of the shenanigans that happens in the world of Tyria, some people get on the game and don't even play at all. Some people never left pre searing since the release of the game that still logged in until I retired my characters back in 2011-12
It was just after the winds of change update. It remains as the only thing I never finished in Guild Wars.
"don't wand the Oni's"
i like Guild Wars 2 and i still play it, but i think i mostly play it just to see where the franchise is going. Guild Wars 1 is still one of my all time favourite games.
If they could just make a small team of 5 maybe 10 people that keep working on it, making small updates here and there, damn what i'd give for that
The problem with that is that a team of 5 costs about 1 million USD a year, and the game doesn’t bring that much revenue anymore 🙁
My Brother should have declared bankruptcy from the amount of debt he put into the GW2 cash shop, he didn't despite my advice and is still paying that debt.... He is still proud he is in the top whatever% of the gw2 efficiency accounts. That's why they pivoted and made a new game.
The "complexity" was exactly was made GW1 so great.
You could come back and learn MORE and as a new player you had so much to explore, it was amazing value.
And you did not have to catch up at all, you could explore anything on your own pace and creep up to the endgame over a long time span.
Not getting to the endgame right away was exactly what made it good, and you could grind a lot of stuff and achievements, hard mode added a MASSIVE amount of value to the game, as it made the actual game TRUELY harder, much better than what difficulty settings usually do, hard mode is an experience of its own.
GW1 as a game was and still is a master piece of a game and it does so much, that the game really just needed more content.
The mission packs are just too small content.
Selling such tiny packages didnt roll too well, i hate microtransactions and want a big package instead.
I agree, when Guild Wars 1 first came out I was a child, so I didn't understand the game mechanics although I was competent enough to be able to do story missions thanks to the henchmen. Now I'm older and I know about builds and theory crafting and stuff, I'm coming back to the game with far more knowledge and I'm finding it far more enjoyable.
“No gear treadmill”
Then they broke their promise with ascended armor
i never played gw1. can i still get into the story at least if i start now in 2020?
Play it's brilliant. Arguably better than Guild Wars 2 even
yes, absolutely .With the addition of heroes you don't even have to worry about server population ( but GW1 never "died " in terms of absence of active players ...there were always players around )
Plenty of people still play it, and even if they didn't you can have AI join you.
All around it's just a much better game than it's bastard-child GW2.
Ofc man, I just restarted playing after 12 + years.And a lot of players do the same
Yes, very much so, but I recommend this, Start Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North. Players I meet are amazing in the game and it is an amazing experience for the first time
I played GW1 thousands of hours but haven't even tried GW2 at all..
Absolutely fantastic analysis WP. Arenanet for me still hold a very unique place in the pantheon of MMO devs, despite their rollercoaster direction over the past decade.
I see this as them trying to take a risk but failing. They had good intentions but their ideas just didnt work out how they expected them to
It's a real shame that GW1 still has no true sequel, direct or in spirit.
only your opinion. a bad one.
I love this WP very interesting look back onto the state of GW1, but putting on the rose coloured glasses, I think there's three things you've sort of missed with the discussion.
The first is the smallest, but I think if the campaigns were walled off like that, which probably would've been a better way through in hinesight, then the easiest solution to the overpowered characters is simply to have servers or versions of the game where the balance is held across the entire game, like ending up effectively occuring. This would split the playerbase more than it already was, and you'd effectively have to have the same balance concerns overall.
The second, related point, to that though, is why have the worlds combined at all in the case of the "walled garden" approach? Effectively the idea is what the serialised releases work on, selling you a seperate game every year. If you want to then play a specific meta or experiance, you just load up that client. (Assassin's Creed being the most obvious example, which is "The Ubisoft Game" is basically a genre in and of itself.) The main difference here is that you're carrying characters and experiance from game to game, which might be enough, but it's a different "sell" then the game which came to be.
Thirdly, I think the major thing that you said in the conclusion but maybe stopped short of is the problem with the Arenanet of the time, and "why" GW2 has ended up so different; Anet as a studio is built on itteration. They were born out of itterating out from WoW and it's direction, which they successfully did, but they never stopped just adding systems. I have no doubt that the graveyard of ideas that the GW2 levelling/storyline progress has become is a direct result of this, and I'm not sure Anet of the day could have pulled themselves away from the notion that itteration is always a good thing. They're definitely not the only studio to do this (Blizz having each WoW expansion have "box features" that stay for one expansion then get dropped is basically the defacto model for MMO's) but I wonder if this tendancy is what makes MMO's untenable in the long run.
With all that said, I love your take on it all in the video. I would love for them to create a new campaign for GW1, and playing it again after a gap is making me fall in love with Tyria all over again...thanks to anyone who pushed through reading this mass of text, hope the world is treating you well during these troubled times.
Really fantastic commentary on your point three. I think it's a really powerful observation. Thanks so much over all for the thoughts on the talking points made!
Thanks for replying :) Seeing GW1 content made me head back into the game, forgot how much I've missed it. Keep up the great work.
I wish they would make GW1,5 where you have some of the old target system and skill system of the old game while and the movement mechanics of the new game, singel target and 8 skills of your own choosing with 2 professions would have been AMAZING. GW1 was more orderly as oppose to the chaos of GW2. They don't need to have that many skills as in the first game, they could like you suggested add new professions but only skills for those two professions. Then add a few map related universal skills that is used only in specific areas. The skill system of the first game was what made it truly shine, the combos you could come up with was amazing
Guild Wars 1 holds a very special place in my heart. For me, while GW2 may be an updated and arguably better experience, it sadly lacks the feel or soul of what hooked me in GW1 in the first place. With new exciting upgrades going on, it was easy to not realize how much was lost as well.
Some people say I'm viewing this through a nostalgia lense, but in my opinion, GW1 was always the superior game in terms of writing and hooking people into a world vast with mystery and wonder. Jumping and dodging and all this movement is nice, but the skills and stories seem to have lost their way.
I really could go on for a long time about all the differences but in the end, they're both great games. I just wish GW2 was more similar to GW1 than it is different. To make me feel like I haven't abandoned an old friend but watched him grow.
I've started playing Guild Wars again when quarantine lockdown happened and I can't stop playing and thinking about it. Just looking at how many people came back to check out the new skills and weapons, shows that there is still a potential for this game to grow, if only ANet wouldn't put it to rest aka Maintenance Mode. Games like Classic WoW and Old-School Runscape are great examples.
Arenanet said that the amount of resources to keep Guild Wars running is so cheap that they'll keep the servers up indefinitely
We need a GW1 REMASTER , modern graphics, updated voice actors for everything, updated AIs for Heroes and enemies.
Best game ever, massive money to gain.
Nobody really wants GW2 ... cant bother to play that Zerg fest anymore.
Hell nah still going strong! 💪
I don’t know if that what I want to be honest the graphics are fine just add a free dlc and so many new people will join
"Nobody really wants gw2" - oh come on. Not saying anything against gw1. I trust all these ppl that it's a good game, but to say that is a bit much.
People judge GW1 as if it was a PVE first game. It wasn't. It was a PVP focused game first and foremost, and it had the most vibrant and thrilling community dedicated to it back then... I will never forget all the fun I had doing GvG, HA and 4v4 Random Arenas... the skill system and metagame was INSANELY good, the sheer diversity of builds you could create, the focus on timing and precise execution during combat... omg there's never been anything like GW1, I miss it... GW2 is just your everyday MMO and while that's fine and has it's audience, it shouldn't even be called Guild Wars.
Well I can't agree with the discounting of the PvE element. Ascalon Pre-Searing, all the way to Kryta, then beyond. I suppose I'm saying that they were heavily invested in making a good story as well.
I played and finished Guild Wars 1 as one of the first batch of players after it came out, but at the time I as young and the whole concept of having to buy expansions at an insane rate scared me off. I finished the core campaign, played a bit of PvP, but never engaged with any of the following expansions.
Maybe it was my inability to understand the unique enigmatic business model at the time and maybe it sounds stupid, but for me GW needed even more engagement from the player than other MMOs to really 'get it' and that was scary.
I spent 7 years of my life playing GW1, I spent 2 months playing GW2.................. That in itself speaks volumes.
The Original and BEST Guild Wars still awaits your return.
I Think the switch to GW2 was a good decision, but it should have been an upgraded GW1 not an entirely new game. GW2 has hardly anything in common with GW1 and that’s really sad
This is one of your best video essays, in my opinion. It relays a kind of melancholy honesty that belies careful consideration. Thank you for the perspective.
GW2 wasnt a real successor because they failed the endgame and mechanics that GW1 was good at. They did not deliever the spirit from GW1 properly, only god knows why. Anet stopped creating content because they believed they could create a real successor, but they really did make a different game.
Man I actually shed a tear at 22:20, that was my time in GW, i fought with heart and soul for my guild. I loved the whole style of the area and the faction war. it was SOOO amazing
Anet please watch this. Hear us. Our money and hearts are ready.
As a GW1 and GW2 player I think the biggest sticking point is that much of what made GW1 special and unique for me as a player were wholly abandoned in GW2 instead of improved upon like we thought it would be. Sure I had my fun with GW2 as it had its own compelling ideas at times and some fun features, but I feel like it's a game that might be in the same universe, but isn't really the sequel I had hoped it would be. It never really scratched the same gameplay itches. And even then seeing how things like Lazarus and the ending for Primordus was handled, it's hard to take the game seriously as a continuation of the rich lore of GW1 and it feels more like a fanfic that sometimes works but is often rushed and sloppy.
The problem GW2 has had ever since it came out is that it always had to high of marks to reach that very often was not met (look back to the manifesto). GW1 didn't have to keep doing skills, professions, etc. the same way for all it's life, the lack of persistent world did balance this in my opinion.
To me all ANET did was switch out one set if perceived and real challenges with GW1 for another set of perceived and real challenges with GW2.
Honestly, Guild Wars 2 is an absolute disgrace to Guild Wars lore and I personally retcon it.
Just jumped back onto GW1 this past week. Loved it back in 2006 and plan on loving it just as much now as I did then.
guild wars 1 has something special, something that is hard to explain and impossible to create on purpose however you can notice it in everyone's feelings about this game.
I think you simply refer to nostalgia.
@@Cykelpump33 yeah it is nostalgia to, for sure, but I did play a lot of games during my life, and those years (2005-2010) and the way I feel when I play them again , or watch a video, or talk about them with some friends is way different. GW 1 was a good and special game, GW 2 is also a good game, but it lacks something.
DEAD!?!?! SON IM RUNNING PVP WITH THE GUILDIES AS WE SPEAK!!
Beautiful discussion of the good and bad of the game. All I have to offer is this: imagine the balls it would take and the hype it would generate if ANet went back to GW1 development and started what is effectively an alternate timeline separate from the one that leads to GW2. A totally different set of circumstances that don't have to lead to the sequel game, instead something new that doesn't keep them pinned to a predetermined destination.
Guild Wars 1 needs an old school runescape type of situation
What they COULD have done was the Lineage II technique. Keep the game and mechanic, just with a new graphics engine. It gets rid of the issue of legacy software, yet keeps what made the game unique. Guild Wars 2 isn't Guild Wars except for lore.
It´s really impressive how much information you know and share this and your vision with us!
WoW Classic exists. Anet should maybe consider that GW1 is worth bringing back to life. That maybe, just maybe there is still enough interest in the original game.
I assure you, there is no maybe about it.
god this game was so good. so far ahead of its time.
I'm considering re-playing through the campaigns on fresh characters.
I'm actually not sure that I finished factions or nightfall back when I played at 12-13 years old. I shared an account with my brother and its likely he played some of the missions and I missed some or I'm not sure if we even finished them all together.
i mostly just played RA / TA and twinked in the lvl 10 pvp in ascalon arenas (it was by far my favorite, like 30-50% of the playerbase was twinks who would get run to endgame zones to get max armor or get a pet deathleveled to 20 over a couple hours before taming it)
the only thing guildwars 1 & 2 have in common is the name everything that made me fall in love with guildwars is missing in guildwars 2
GW was my favourite game ever. I want to go back to it but don't have a PC anymore
despite nostalgia I have two reasons why guildwars 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. First i didnt need to pay for a sub "as a kid this was HUGE". Second the fact that you could come up with builds on your own that wernt in the build wiki was crazy. Because of this Ive met a few people that make game breaking builds for both PVP and PVE that were never patched. Guildwars 1 was a short lived sort of wild west where in my mind if you were creative and determined you could overcome your goals.
What builds were gamebreaking that were never patched? 👀
For some of us - GW1 never died.... And some of us never left. I would love if Anet would come back and expand the game more. Id definitely throw more money at the game.
Some of us left three, maybe four times...
@@warnerchandler9826 But you keep coming back like that ex.
The game is still very active! Quite insane considering how there have been no updates for almost a decade now.. no game can compare.
So, You're just a GW2 apologist, is what I'm getting from your video.
I’m not mad anet left gw1 and moved on, I’m mad that gw2 is nothing like gw1. The skills the armor is far different from gw1. In gw1 I had several builds I switch to, in gw2 I can’t do that, I’m tired of using the same build over and over again, also I like being a healer
You can switch builds on the fly in gw2.....
Guild Wars 1 was by far better than GW2.....
Personally I think the root mistake was marketting...as soon as you brand the new one guild wars TWO, its the death of the first game. You just won't see any sort of large in flux of new players to the "old one" when there's is literally a sequel also on the market with more advanced features and graphics. They should have made GW2 a different title altogether with a shared lore but NOT a sequel to GW1 so that both games can live side by side.
Just logged into my Guild Wars 1 account after watching this video. Thank you!